The Wedding of River Song (TV story)
The Wedding of River Song 'is the thirteenth and final episode of the sixth series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Steven Moffat, directed by Jeremy Webb and featured Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams with Alex Kingston as River Song. Overview To be added Synopsis It's 22 April, 2011, the day the Doctor is supposed to die. But time seems to be stuck at 5:02 pm. London streets are clogged not only with automobiles but also Roman chariots; pterodactyls fly in the sky. The Holy Roman Emperor, Winston Churchill, calls on a prisoner to explain what is happening. In fact, all time seems to be occurring all at once. The Doctor determines that a fixed point in time has been altered or prevented from occurring. That fixed point is his own death at Lake Silencio where history records that River Song killed him. Of course not all is as it seems, particularly as it relates to the Doctor himself. Plot London, 22 April 2011, 5:02 pm - Weather reports warn of incoming solar flare activity while the train runs on time on it's track suspended around the Gherkin, the skies are filled with lanes of motor cars suspended by hot air balloons, signs in Hyde Park warn tourists not to feed the pterodactyls, the streets are backed up with cars and Roman Chariots, Charles Dickens makes his appearance on BBC News promoting his upcoming Christmas Special and a news reporter details the return of Roman Emperor Winston Churchill returning to the Buckingham Senate on his personal mammoth. In the Senate, Churchill has his Silurian physician Dr. Malohkeh give him the time and is baffled by the fact that it's always and has always been 5:02 pm. He orders the Soothsayer brought from the Tower of London and questions him about his declarations that time is damaged, all happening at once and asks to know what happened to time; the Doctor looks up at him and gives a simple answer: "A woman". Sometime earlier, the Doctor salvages all the information the Daleks possess about the Silence from a damaged Dalek before heading to the Docks of Calisto B. He asks for Gideon Vandaluer, a former envoy of the Silence; however, when he arrives, he points out that Vandaleur has been dead for six months and disables him with his sonic screwdriver, asking to the crewmember of the Teselecta watching the exchange through the eye to speak to Captain Carter. He surmises that the Teselecta is posing as Vandaleur to investigate the Silence and asks for their weakest link; Carter directs him to Gantok, another associate of the Silence who offers to take him to find the still-living head of Dorium Maldovar, who could help him find the information he seeks if he spares his life by throwing the game of Live Chess he's winning, as the voltage running through the Queen, the only piece he's allowed to move, would kill him. Gantok takes him to the Seventh Transept, where the Headless Monks keep the heads of their converted donors to their order; when they find Dorium, Gantok attempts to kill the Doctor for besting him at the game but a trap door unlocks beneath him and drops him into a pit of carnivorous skulls that devour him alive. Dorium wakes up and the Doctor asks him for any information about the Silence. In the present, Churchill finds the Doctor's claims to be ludicrous but still continues to listen, waiting to hear about the woman he'd mentioned. Dorium explains that the Silence are a religious order determined to avert the Doctor's future and ensure that he never makes it to Trenzalore, citing the adage "On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, where no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never be answered'. The Doctor nervously agrees to hear the question and takes Dorium's head with him in the TARDIS, persisting that it's not time for him to go to Silencio yet while Dorium knows he's aware of why he has to die. In the present, the Doctor asks Churchill that if a man knew a terrible secret that couldn't ever be told, how he would erase the secret forever. Churchill muses that he'd destroy the man and the Doctor states that Silence would fall. He notices that they left Churchill's office without noticing, Churchill is brandishing his revolver and the Doctor has been running when he spots a black tally mark on his arm before resuming his story. Dorium tells the Doctor that the time and place of his death are a fixed point that he can't escape from and he goes on an angry rant that he is not beholden to time in that way and he can do as much as he likes for as long as he wants and doesn't have to go there until he chooses. He gets a call on the TARDIS phone from England, 2011 from the nursemaid of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to inform him that his old friend passed away in his sleep three months prior. Following the call, the Doctor's entire resolve shatters and he decides it's time to stop running and accept his fate. Writing his letters to his friends, he leaves them with the Teselecta to deliver. After meeting his friends in America at the correct date and time, the Doctor spots the astronaut emerge from the lake and goes to meet it while his friends watch. The astronaut lifts it's visor to reveal a past River, unable to stop the suit's weaponry; she begs him to run, to not give in to his supposed death but he voices that it's time for him and bids her farewell. The suit fires off five shots in rapid succession but the blows don't kill him. River gleefully informs him that she's drained the suit's weapon system and at that moment, on account of a fixed point being changed, history collapses. While the Doctor finishes accounting the story to Churchill, they both realises that they've been defending themselves for the past two minutes and the Doctor remembers the Silence's ability of memory proofing; he checks his arm and there are only four marks but then notices dozens on his other arm. They look up and the ceiling is swarming with Silence looking down at them. A smoke grenade rolls in and the room is suddenly swarmed with soldiers keeping their eyes on the Silence, lead by Amy. To the Doctor's horror though, she enters the fray brandishing an eyepatch like Kovarian's before she shoots him with a pulse to the head and knocks him out. He awakens on a train and goes on for a few minutes attempting to get Amy to remember her true history before he notices that she hasn't forgotten anything but still struggles to keep it all in her memories because of the conflicting events involving the Doctor's death by Lake Silencio. Furthermore, she is still married to Rory in this reality but doesn't recognise him and thus drew a picture of Jeff Angelo while the real Rory is one of her soldiers. The train arrives at the Pyramids of Giza, the established base of Area 52. Inside, Amy shows the Doctor dozens of Silence contained in fluid tanks that insulate their electrical potential. While Rory goes off to do a sweep of the tanks, Amy brings the Doctor to the center of operations where they meet with River and a restrained Madame Kovarian. The Doctor grabs for River's arm and, the two being the opposite ends of the disruption, the broken fixed point shorts and history starts to reassert itself. River breaks free and has the Doctor cuffed so he can't try again. Elsewhere, Rory continues his sweep of the pyramid when the Silence start breaking out of their tanks. Kovarian smugly reveals that they've never had the Silence contained, but merely prepared for the Doctor when Rory storms in and warns them that they've all broken free. Furthermore, Kovarian directs them to the fact that they are wearing eye drives like her's when one of the technicians receives an agonising shock from her one and dies. Suddenly everybody's drives start to shock them and the Doctor orders everybody to remove theirs. As Kovarian gloats, she is shocked when her's starts to flicker with electricity as well. As the Silence work their way through the pyramid, killing every soldier they encounter, the Doctor demands River and Amy to let him fix things but they insist instead that he lets them show him what they've been working on to save him first. After River takes the Doctor off to the top of the pyramid, Amy tells Rory to take off his eye drive before it activates, but he leaves it on so he won't forget his assailants - even though it has already activated. Resigned to his fate, he tells Amy to leave and she complies just as the Silence break in and taunt Rory about the fact that she will never return for him. However, Amy suddenly reemerges with a machine gun and takes them all out, tearing off Rory's eye drive. As they leave to follow the others, Kovarian begs Amy to show her mercy, believing that she'll help her for fear of upsetting the Doctor. However, still bitter for Kovarian taking her baby away, Amy replaces her eye drive and leaves with Rory as she is shocked to death. At the top of the pyramid, River shows the Doctor the fruit of their labours, a transmitter beacon sending out a message, a plea for help from the rest of the universe in saving him. He finds the idea absolutely ridiculous while River reveals that all the signals that the planet's been misreading as solar flares are all the signals from the peoples of the universe agreeing to help to save his life. He continues the persist that dying is the only way to repair history and River states that nobody in the universe will suffer greater than her if she is forced to murder him. Knowing there is only one way to make River agree to help, the Doctor has Amy uncuff him and uses his bow tie to perform a battlefield wedding between River and himself, with Amy and Rory serving as parent officiators. He whispers a message in her ear and tells her to never tell anybody what he'd said. As they share a kiss, the differential starts to collapse and history reasserts itself - the Doctor is killed beside Lake Silencio, his friends grieve his death and time moves forward. Sometime later, River returns from the events of the crash of the Byzantium and Amy imparts her wishes that she could speak with the Doctor about what happened in the alternate timeline, specifically her killing Kovarian. Despite having been told not to, River confides a secret to her and Rory returns home to discover his wife and daughter in a state of jubilation when Amy realises, to her clearly perturbation, that she's now the Doctor's mother-in-law. Elsewhere, a hooded figure returns Dorium's head to the Seventh Transept and disrobes to be none other than the Doctor, himself. Flashbacks show that when the Teselecta offered assistance to the Doctor, he landed the TARDIS inside the robot and had the crew disguise it as him and it ''was what was killed by the side of Lake Silencio in his place. He admits to Dorium that the events of the day came about because he's become too loud, too noticeable in recent years and has thus decided it's best his friends think him dead so he can slip back into the shadows. Despite agreeing to keep his secrets, Dorium continues to warn him as he leaves that the prophecy of the Fields of Trenzalore is still waiting for him, the day that the question he's been running from for his entire life his come that day: "Doctor Who?" Cast * The Doctor - Matt Smith * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan * Rory - Arthur Darvill * River Song - Alex Kingston * Madame Kovarian - Frances Barber * Dorium Maldovar - Simon Fisher-Becker * Emperor Winston Churchill - Ian McNeice * Dr Malohkeh - Richard Hope * The Silent - Marnix Van Den Broeke * Voice of the Dalek - Nicholas Briggs * Charles Dickens - Simon Callow * As herself - Sian Williams * As himself - Bill Turnbull * Newsreader - Meredith Vieira * Gideon Vandaleur - Niall Greig Fulton * Barman - Sean Buckley * Gantok - Rondo Haxton * Dr Kent - Emma Campbell-Jones * Nurse - Katharine Burford * Carter - Richard Dillane * Canton Delaware - William Morgan Sheppard Crew ''To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Wedding of River Song'' page on '''Doctor Who Website